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Sunday, October 16th, 2011
Sylvia and I carved a Jack O'Lantern this afternoon.
posted evening of October 16th, 2011: 3 responses
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Saturday, October first, 2011
 So as of this week I have given in to another one of my body's limitations: for a year or so I have been wearing progressive bifocals, and it's only really in the past couple of months that I've realized, they just don't work for me as reading glasses. I want to be looking straight ahead or slightly up when I'm reading, because my childhood nerve damage means I have double vision when I'm looking down. So: I now have separate glasses for reading. Hopefully I can get in the habit of using them, I think it will make the physical experience of reading a lot nicer.
posted morning of October first, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, September 18th, 2011
 Good, silly, fun: following a pack of hyperactive sixth-graders around the mini golf course all afternoon. Summer is over, autumn is just starting, and the weather was perfect for the party. After we played 18 holes, came back home for pizza and ice cream. A fine way to ring in the opening of Sylvia's twelfth year.
posted evening of September 18th, 2011: 1 response
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Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
Happy Birthday, Ellen! We rode our beribboned bikes around South Orange and then came back home for a picnic dinner in the back yard.
posted evening of August 24th, 2011: 1 response
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Sunday, August 14th, 2011
I met up with Miriam and Jon last night to go see The Shirts. This time they were playing Cha Cha's, on the Coney Island boardwalk, and they were completely in their element. A very different experience from watching them at Arlene's Grocery on the Lower East Side -- the crowd was a Brooklyn crowd,  probably half of the audience was made up of a big extended family whose yearly reunion at Cha Cha's coincided with The Shirts' date... Listening to the crowd sing along on the chorus of "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn" warmed the cockles of my heart. It's been a long time since I've been at Coney Island at night. That is the best time there. The crowds of tourists thin out, the gray dusk of evening and the darkness of night settle over the beach and the water -- the few people still out walking on the sand are black silhouettes against the dark water.  Then you turn your gaze back inland and get a fever of brightly colored neon shapes and hawkers yelling, rides sliding past and spinning around, smells of fried food and sunburnt bodies...
Miriam and Jon and I had dinner at Tatiana's in Brighton Beach and walked down the boardwalk in the gloaming. When we got to Cha Cha's, we were happy to find Bill and Brian of Shanghai Love Motel and their S.O.'s, Lisa and Maia rocking out to The Shirts' pop beat. A great way to spend a Saturday evening.
posted morning of August 14th, 2011: Respond
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Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
 Last week, Sylvia finished up a bicycle repair class she's been taking at summer camp. Today, Tom Reingold, who taught the class, invited her over for a lesson in wheel-truing -- the last step to getting her new bike ridable. It is a blue Jamis Ranger of recent vintage which Tom found in his ramblings in need of lubrication and tuning-up, and a new seat. And it's all done! Sylvia took her first ride on it this evening.
I'm impressed -- I must have been 14 or 15 before I did a full tune-up on a bike. Click through for more pictures of the bike repair.
posted evening of July 26th, 2011: 3 responses
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Monday, July 11th, 2011
Ellen got some nice photos of us at the show last night -- click through for the slide show.
posted morning of July 11th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, June 12th, 2011
 Sylvia has been running for several months now with the local branch of the group Girls on the Run, getting progressively more endurance and faster (well she was pretty fast to start out with; principally she is gaining endurance). Yesterday she ran 5K at the Florham Park Jaycees' annual event, with a bunch of other girls from the group (and several hundred runners in all). The run took her 36 minutes and tired her out! Here she is coming off the starting line with her friend Alessandra -- Sylvia and Alessandra crossed the finish line together too. Click through for more photos from the run.
posted morning of June 12th, 2011: Respond
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Friday, May 27th, 2011
Sylvia is nearly done with elementary school, getting ready to move on to middle school -- one of the highlights of her fifth grade year was performing in the fifth grade musical, Grease Jr. Here is a photo of her with two friends from the cast party -- the photographer is Jeannine Redd, and congratulations to Jeannine -- the photo was selected for inclusion in the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition's Through the Lens of Integration exhibit.
posted afternoon of May 27th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, May 15th, 2011
(Guest post by Ellen)
A rainy day seems about the right time to go over the photos from our China trip last month and whittle them down to a fast-movin' slideshow of a manageable 40. You'll see Qing, our guide in Beijing, with Sylvia and Jeremy in Tiananmen Sq., the Sun and Moon Pagodas in Guilin, the Great Wall on a rainy day, the Forbidden City. All of the photos of sculptures are from the Art Zone in Beijing. The photo of the bird cages hanging in Mulberry trees is outside Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai, and in the courtyard of Michael's House, where we stayed in Beijing, you'll also see a bird cage - these inspired our recent acquisition of Woodstock and Chirpers, green and blue parakeets residing in Sylvia's room. The photos of Sylvia, outside People's Sq. Train Station and inside, are near Sylvia's foundling site in Shanghai. The photos of the little kids and the photo of Sylvia with a camera in her hand, are taken at the Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute. The Buddha was in Suzhou. Sylvia reading a Chinese version of Harry Potter and Jeremy are taken on a boat in the canal city of Qibao. Sylvia on a bamboo raft was taken on the Li River in Guilin. The futuristic city is Pudong, taken from the Bund in Shanghai. The view taken from the little balcony to the street was from the Magnolia B&B, the place we stayed in Shanghai. The exercise equipment in a public area in Beijing was installed at the time of the Olympics - they're all over. (Reminds me a little of the enormous public swimming pool in the tiny town we stayed in Spain, put in during Franco's regime.) The red pandas, erhu playing musician, gorgeous flowering trees are taken in Seven Stars Park, Guilin. The chicken and quail eggs in the bucket are soaked in tea, and sold on the street. And check out the rock formation of Elephant Trunk Hill.
What photo do you like best?
posted evening of May 15th, 2011: 1 response
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